Haftarat Tazria—1 Kings: A Foreign Slave

This week’s Torah portion, Tazria (Leviticus/Vayikra 12:1-13:59), gives instructions for a priest to diagnose a skin abnormality called tzara-at (צָרַעַת), a non-contagious condition characterized by white, often scaly patches. Any Israelite who has tzara-at is ritually impure and must be socially isolated.

… his garments must be torn, and his head [of hair] must be let loose, and his upper lip must be covered, and he must cry out “Impure! Impure!” All the days that the mark is on him … he will dwell alone; outside the camp is his dwelling place. (Leviticus 13:45-46)

Naaman, by Pieter Fransz de Grebber, 17th c., detail

This week’s haftarah reading from the Prophets (2 Kings 4:42-5:19) tells the story of the Aramaean general Na-aman, who is miraculously cured of his tzara-at thanks to an Israelite slave and an Israelite prophet.

Na-aman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man before his lord, and his face was lifted [he was respected]; because through him, God had given victory to Aram. But the man, who was a mighty warrior, was a metzora. (2 Kings 5:1)

metzora (מְצֺרָע) = person with tzara-at (צָרַעַת),

Na-aman continues to live in his own house in the capital, Damascus. During the course of the story, he has an audience with his king, and he travels with an escort of horsemen. So either a metzora suffered less ostracism in the kingdom of Aram than in Israel, or the author of 2 Kings assumed that Aramaeans were less concerned about ritual purity.

Nevertheless, Na-aman considers his unsightly skin a serious enough problem to be worth journeying to another country and paying a lot of silver and gold for a cure.

But who can cure tzara-at? Na-aman only finds out about the possibility of a cure because he owns a slave from the kingdom of Israel.

A captive girl

And Aram had gone out marauding, and had taken captive a young na-arah from the land of Israel. And she was waiting on Na-aman’s wife. (2 Kings 5:2)

na-arah (נַעֲרָה) = girl: an unmarried adolescent female, or a female slave.

A raiding party from the kingdom of Aram could easily cross the border into the northern, less populated part of the kingdom of Israel. And raids between countries in the 10^th-8^th centuries C.E. were common, judging by the Hebrew Bible, where sometimes Israelites are the perpetrators, and sometimes armed bands from other countries raid Israelites villages. Either way, the raiders kill the men of the village, then bring home the booty, which includes women, children, and livestock. Women are raped, and both women and children are sold as slaves.

For example, before David becomes the king of Judah, he leads a large band of outlaws. At one point he is a vassal of Akhish, the Philistine king of Gath, who gives him the town of Ziklag. David leads his men in raids on villages outside Gath (and outside Israel), and splits the loot with King Akhish.

Once when David and his men come home to Ziklag, they discover that a band of Amalekites have raided it, burned it down, and taken all the women and children captive.² David’s men hunt down the Amalekites, kill all the men who do not escape in time, and recover all of their own women, children, and livestock.³ The story implies that the Amalekites raped some of the women, since David and his men catch them chogegim (חֺגְגִוּם) = celebrating; engaging in illicit sex.⁴ But as least none of the women had been sold yet.

Raiding was a normal part of life in the Ancient Near East. So was slavery, both debt-slavery and the slavery of foreign captives.

Israelites who could not repay loans sold themselves and/or their children as temporary slaves. According to the book of Exodus, an Israelite man must be freed after six years of slavery, and when an Israelite girl reaches puberty her status changes from slave to wife of her owner or his son. (See my post Mishpatim: On Slavery.)

But the rules are different when the slave is a foreign captive. The Torah considers a foreign slave, male or female, the owner’s permanent property, property that can be resold or inherited.⁵

Naaman’s Wife and the Slave-girl, from Rev. Hurlburt, Story of the Bible, 1904

A sympathetic slave

And Aram had gone out marauding, and had taken captive a young na-arah from the land of Israel. And she was waiting on Na-aman’s wife. (2 Kings 5:2)

Who captured the Israelite girl in this week’s haftarah?

As the commander of the entire army of the large kingdom of Aram, Na-aman would not be part of a raiding band himself. Probably one of Na-aman’s soldiers raided an Israelite village and seized the na-arah. Then she was either given or sold to General Na-Aman, who assigned her to wait on his wife.

Waiting on the wife of an important man would be a light duty, probably lighter work than the na-arah had done at home. In Na-aman’s house in Damascus she would eat well, and be given clothing and a bed. She would probably grieve for the men in her family who had been killed, but, as Rabbi Steinsaltz concluded: “Over time, she became close to her mistress, and the Israelite girl, who had observed Naaman’s distress and loneliness, sought to help him.”⁶

And she said to her mistress: “Oh would that my lord were in front of the prophet who is in Samaria! That is who would remove his tzara-at from him!” (2 Kings 5:3)

Samaria⁷ is the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The kingdoms of Aram and Israel are neither allies nor enemies at the time, but Aram is more powerful.

When he hears what the na-arah said, Na-aman tells his king, saying:

Like this and like that spoke the na-arah who is from the land of Israel. (2 Kings 5:4)

The king of Aram gives his commander permission to leave and a letter for the king of Israel.

Why does the na-arah feel sympathy for Na-aman, her owner and the commander of the army of Aram?

The author of the story named him Na-aman (נַעֲמָן), which comes from the verb na-am (נָעָמ) = was pleasant, was agreeable. Na-aman gets angry only once, later in the haftarah, when he is waiting in his chariot outside the house of the prophet Elisha in Samaria, backed by his escort of horsemen. He expects the miracle-worker to come out to him, but Elisha stays inside and sends him a message telling him to go bathe seven times in the Jordan River. Na-aman complains:

“Hey! I said to myself: He will certainly come out and stand and call on the name of Y-H-V-H his god, and he will wave his hand over the place and remove the tzara-at!” (2 Kings 5:11)

The commander of the army of Aram feels insulted. He adds:

“Are not the Amana and the Parpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I bathe in them and be purified?” And he turned and went away in burning indignation. (2 Kings 5:12)

Elisha has even insulted Na-aman’s country.

But his avadim approached and spoke to him, they said: “Sir, [if] the prophet spoke to you of a big thing, wouldn’t you do it? Then how much more when he said to you: Bathe and be purified.” (2 Kings 5:13)

avadim (עֲבָדִים) = subordinates: slaves, servants, courtiers, those who serve God.

The horsemen are Na-aman’s subordinates, but they are used to speaking to him frankly. And he respects their opinion. (See my post 2 Kings and Tazria: Skin.)

Then he went down and dipped into the Jordan seven times, in accordance with the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young na-ar, and he was purified. (2 Kings 5:14)

na-ar (נַעַר) = boy: an unmarried adolescent male, or a male slave.

In context, Na-aman’s skin now looks like the skin of a young adolescent boy. But he has also been humbled. He returns to Elisha’s house and stands in front of him. (In the Hebrew Bible, someone of lower rank stands in front of a seated person of higher rank.) Na-aman says:

“Hey, now I know that there is no god in the whole world except in Israel! And now please take this gift from avdekha.” (2 Kings 5:15)

avdekha (עַבְדֶּךָ) = your servant, your subordinate. (Another form of avadim.)

Na-aman respectfully refers to himself as subordinate to Elisha. And Elisha, refusing to accept any gift, calls himself God’s servant by saying he stands in front of God.⁸

Since Na-aman trusted the judgment of his horsemen, it is easy to believe that he also trusted the judgment of his na-arah—even before she mentioned the prophet in Samaria, and he acted on her information.

No wonder the na-arahfrom Israelfelt sympathy for her owner, a pleasant man who respects what his subordinates say.

Even in an ancient society where it is normal to own slaves, and even in a society where it is normal to raid a village, kill all the men, and seize the women, human nature is not all bad. This week’s haftarah demonstrates that there can also be kindness, sympathy, respect, and humility.

Even in a modern society where it is normal for some people to be homeless or starving, and even in a society where it is normal to start a war that kills men, women, and children, human nature is not all bad. We do not need to sink to the level of some world leaders. We can act instead with kindness, sympathy, and respect—and work to change our governments so that there will be healing instead of destruction.

Deuteronomy 20:10-11.
1 Samuel 30:1-4.
1 Samuel 30:16-20.
1 Samuel 30:16.
Leviticus 25:44-46.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, Steinsaltz on Tanakh: II Kings, http://www.sefaria.org.
“Shomron” (שֺׁמְרוֹן) in Hebrew.
2 Kings 5:16.

Shemini : Haunted by a Cow

Moshe (“Moses” in English) is the protagonist in the story of Exodus through Deuteronomy—from his secret birth in Egypt, to his death on a peak overlooking Canaan. His brother Aharon (“Aaron” in English) is three years older, but the Torah does not even tell us that he exists until Moshe’s first time on Mount Sinai, when he is begging God to send someone else to free the Israelites from Egypt.¹

Then God replies:

“Isn’t your brother Aharon, the Levite? I know that he can certainly speak, and also, hey! he is going out to meet you. And he will see you, and he will rejoice in his heart. And you will speak to him, and put the words in his mouth. And I, I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do.” (Exodus 4:14-15)

The brother who assisted the prophet

When Aharon first hears from God, the Torah simply reports:

Then God said to Aharon: “Go to the wilderness to meet Moshe.” And he went, and he encountered him at the mountain of God, and he kissed him. (Exodus 4:27)

The two brothers walk back to Egypt, where Aharon assembles all the Israelites elders and tells them everything that Moshe has told him. This is the last time that Aharon does the talking for Moshe in the book of Exodus. (See my post Shemot to Bo: Moses Finds his Voice.) But he continues to serve as Moshe’s assistant through all ten of God’s miraculous plagues.

Throughout the book of Exodus, Moshe is the prophet, the leader, and the center of attention. When God does not tell him what to do, he decides on his own. Aharon does whatever his little brother tells him to do.

Adoration of the Golden Calf, Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th c.

Aharon’s first independent act is making a golden calf in the Torah portion Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35), a clear violation of God’s law. Despite his crime, he becomes the high priest of the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion, Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47).

*Ki Tisa: t**he brother who made a golden calf*

When the Israelites reach Mount Sinai, Moshe is the one who listens to all of God’s rules and passes them on to the people. Then God summons Moshe to climb to the summit alone and receive the stone tablets. Before he hikes up, Moshe assigns Aharon and another leader named Chur to judge legal cases in his absence. His absence lasts for 40 days and 40 nights, as he listens to God’s instructions for setting up a centralized religion.

At the top of Mount Sinai, God tells Moshe that Aharon will be the first high priest, and his four sons will be priests under him. But at the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites abandon hope that their leader will ever return to them.

And the people saw that Moshe was shamefully late in coming down from the mountain, and they assembled against Aharon and said to him: “Get up, make us a god that will go before us! Because this Moshe, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!” (Exodus 32:1)

Like the other Israelites, Aharon heard the second of the “Ten Commandments”: “You must not make an idol, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or what is on the earth underneath, or what is in the waters underneath the earth. You must not bow down to them and you must not serve them …” (Exodus 20:4-5)

And like the other Israelites, Aharon heard Moshe repeat God’s subsequent law: “With me, you must not make gods of silver or gods of gold. You must not make them!” (Exodus 20:20, 24:3-4)

As one of the two designated judges, Aharon is supposed to hand down the law. Yet when a group of Israelites order him make them a god, Aharon immediately asks the people for their gold earrings.

And he took [the gold] from their hand, and he shaped it with an engraving tool, and he made it into a cast eigel. And they said: “This is your god, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4)

eigel (עֵגֶל) = calf, bull-calf.

And Aharon saw, and he built an altar, and he proclaimed: “A festival for Y-H-V-H tomorrow!” (Exodus 32:5)

Has Aharon completely forgotten God’s prohibitions against gold idols? Or does he think that God will overlook his disobedience as long as he claims that the golden calf represents the right god, the God whose personal name is spelled Y-H-V-H?

Is he simply afraid to oppose the men who asked him to make an idol? (According to the midrash collection Vayikra Rabbah, the Israelites asked Chur for an idol first, and killed him when he refused to make one.)² Later commentators added that Aharon’s fear made him stall for time, in the hope that Moshe would return before the festival.³

Or was Aharon an agreeable person who has never learned how to handle confrontation, because his little brother was always there to do it?

And they got up early the next day, and they raised fire-offerings and they offered wholeness-offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to drink. Then they got up to make merry. (Exodus 32:6)

Their happy relief is interrupted by Moshe striding into the camp and shattering the two stone tablets he received from God. Then he grinds the gold calf into dust.

And Moshe said to Aharon: “What did this people do to you, that you have brought upon them a great chatah?” (Exodus 32:21)

chatah (חֲטָאָה) = guilt, sin (in relation to God).

And Aharon said: “Don’t let my lord’s nose get hot [with anger]! You yourself know the people, that they are set on evil. They said to me: Make us a god that will go before us, because this Moshe, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him! And I said to them: Who has gold? And they broke it off and gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this eigel!” (Exodus 32:22-24)

At least Aharon does not invent an excuse for his behavior, although he does make it sound as if the calf emerged all by itself, without any shaping or casting on Aharon’s part.

I can imagine Moshe rolling his eyes. But instead of asking his brother a follow-up question, he turns his attention to the drunk Israelites who were making merry in front of the golden calf.

And Moshe saw that the people had lost control—because Aharon had let them lose control … Then Moshe stood in the gate of the camp and said: “Whoever is for Y-H-V-H, to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered to him. (Exodus 32:25-26)

Moshe orders the Levite men to go through the camp killing all the idol-worshippers. Then God sends a plague to kill any who were overlooked.⁴

But neither Moshe nor God punishes Aharon.

Moshe hikes up to top of Mount Sinai for another forty days, then returns to the camp with God’s pardon and a second pair of stone tablets. At that point he announces God’s plans for the revised religion. The people enthusiastically donate materials and labor to make a new portable sanctuary and altar, and new vestments for the priests. Aharon is still slated to be the first high priest, and his sons are still slated to serve as his assistants.

Shemini: memories of the golden calf

In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini (“Eighth”), Aharon and his sons have completed seven days of sitting at the entrance of the new sanctuary, also called the Tent of Meeting. Their ordination as the only priests of the revised religion is almost finished.

And it was on the eighth day, Moshe called to Aharon, to his sons, and to the elders of Israel. (Leviticus 9:1)

Until now, Moshe has been offering the animal sacrifices to God. This will be Aharon’s first day to make offerings on the altar himself.

And he said to Aharon: “Take yourself an eigel, a son of the herd [male two-year-old], as a chatat, and an unblemished ram as a rising-offering, and bring them near in front of God.” (Leviticus 9:2)

chatat (חַטָּאת) = an offering to expiate guilt or atone for sin. (From the noun chatah.)

Later in the book of Leviticus, in the portion Acharei Mot, Aharon is instructed to offer a par, (פַּר = adult bull) annually on Yom Kippur, as a guilt offering for himself and his sons—just in case they remain guilty of any transgressions committed during the past year.⁵

R.S. Hirsch explained that Aharon’s first guilt offering is a two-year-old male calf because “It is fitting that the priest who is about to serve in the Sanctuary should represent himself with such an offering. Later, however, when he has already assumed the office … he represents himself as a par.”⁶

(The standard practice was that whoever brought a guilt offering to the altar would lay his hands on its head before it was slaughtered, thus indicating his identity with the animal and symbolically offering himself to God. Aharon must identify with a calf for his first guilt offering, and with a grown bull from then on.)

But the main line of commentary, from Sifra (ca. 300 C.E.) to Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (2022)⁷ deduces that Aharon has not yet cleared his guilt for making the golden eigel that people used as an idol, so now he must make atonement with a live eigel.

Then, as the high priest, Aharon can effect atonement for the Israelites who worshiped the golden calf.

Shemini: still afraid

Moshe tells Aharon when it is time to slaughter his own bull-calf as a guilt offering, along with his own ram as a rising-offering, and a hairy goat as a guilt offering for all the Israelites, along with other animal offerings and a grain offering. He concludes:

“… today, Y-H-V-H will appear to you!” (Leviticus 9:4)

Moshe repeats that promise to the whole assembly of Israelites, who have been fashioning all the pieces of the new sanctuary and the priests’ vestments for months, perhaps even a full year. This is the critical moment when they all will find out whether their work has been in vain.

Moshe tells his brother to come close to the new copper altar. The next verse says merely:

And Aharon came close to the altar, and he slaughtered the eigel for the chatat that was his. (Leviticus 9:8)

But according to the commentary, he is afraid to approach the altar. Ramban wrote: “Some Rabbis say that Aaron saw the [horned] altar in the form of the bull, and he was frightened by it.”⁸

Altars throughout the Levant were square boxes with protrusions shaped like horns at the four top corners. And every calf, even if it were only one year old, would have horns.

Ramban explained: “The reason for this [apparition which Aaron saw in the altar] was that since Aaron was the holy one of the Eternal, having no sin on his soul except for the incident of the golden calf, therefore that sin was firmly fixed in his mind … It thus appeared to him as if the form of the calf was there [in the altar] preventing his [attaining] atonement.”⁹

Or, as Rabbi David Kasher put it in the 21^st century: “You see, it wasn’t just the altar. Aaron saw bulls everywhere. They haunted him. Bulls, and cows, and calfs—bovine beasts of every shape and size—their horns pointed at him, their hooves marching towards him. They were coming to collect punishment for his great sin. … Aaron stands there and wonders how he will ever be able to do this job. How can he atone for others when he himself is so full of sin? And Moses tells him, you are right, my brother. You will only become the High Priest for these people once you have worked through your own issues. You must find peace inside yourself before you can find it for anyone else. So first offer your sacrifices, first atone for yourself.”¹⁰

Then the sons of Aharon brought the blood to him, and he dipped his finger into the blood, and he put it on horns of the altar, and he poured the [remaining] blood on the foundation of the altar. (Leviticus 9:9)

Aharon is back on track. He continues performing the tasks of a high priest until all the animals have been slaughtered and burned according to regulations, and their blood distributed appropriately.

Then Aharon raised his hand toward the people, and he blessed them. And he came down from making the chatat, the rising-offering, and the wholeness-offering. Then Moshe and Aharon entered the Tent of Meeting, and they came out and they blessed the people. And the glory of Y-H-V-H appeared to the entire people—and fire went out from in front of Y-H-V-H, and it consumed the rising-offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and they sang out joyfully, and they threw themselves down on their faces. (Leviticus 9:22-24)

What would it be like to believe you had done something so terrible you could never be forgiven?

What would it be like to see a miraculous fire rush out from the Holy of Holies to pardon you?

What would it be like to be Aharon?

Exodus 4:10-13. See my post Shemot: Moses Gives Up.
Vayikra Rabbah, midrash (an imaginative form of commentary) composed ca. 500 C.E.
E.g. Or HaChayim, 18^th century C.E.
Exodus 32:35.
Leviticus 16:6, 16:11-14.
19^th century Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Vayikra, Part 1, English translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 278.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, Schocken Books, New York, 2022 p. 61. See also Midrash Tanchuma, 6^th-8^th centuries C.E.; Rashi, 11^th century; Da-at Zekinim, 12^th-13^th centuries; Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher, 14^th century; and Or HaChayim by Chayim ibn Attar, 18^th century.
Ramban is the acronym of 13^th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, a.k.a. Nachmanides. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
Ramban, ibid.
David Kasher, ParshaNut, Shemini: “Come Close”.

Pesach: A History

The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, and their God brought them out to freedom and led them to a new home in the land of Canaan. This is the plot summary of the books of Exodus and Numbers, the theme of the spring holiday of Passover, and the foundational story of the Jewish people.

No other population in the Ancient Near East had a foundational story with themes of enslavement, liberation, or emigration.

Pesach (פֶּסַח), “Passover” in English, begins this Wednesday. Even Jews who never set foot inside a synagogue will gather for a seder (סֵדֶר = order) one or more evenings during the seven or eight days of the holiday.¹

Observance in Exodus

Painting the blood, History Bible, Paris,1390

The holiday of Pesach is rooted in the Torah portion Bo in the book of Exodus (Exodus 10:1-13:6). It is spring when God is just about to afflict Egypt with the tenth and final plague: the death of firstborn sons, even the pharaoh’s. But God will spare the firstborn sons of the Israelites, as long as they follow instructions. Every Israelite household must slaughter a one-year-old lamb or goat on the 14^th day of the month. They must catch its blood in a basin, dip a branch of oregano in it,² and daub blood on the frame around their door: the two doorposts and the lintel. Because, God explains:

“And the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are. I will see the blood, ufasachti you, and there will not be a blow of destruction for you, when I strike in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:13)

ufasachti (וּפָסַחְתִּי) = and I will skip. (A form of the verb pasach, פָּסַח = skip, hop, limp. This is also the source of the name of the festival, Pesach.)

The Israelites must roast the lamb and eat it inside their house on the fateful night, along with matzah and bitter herbs. And they must eat quickly, standing up, with their robes hiked up and girded, their sandals on their feet, and their staffs in their hands.³ Not an easy task!

Then God decrees that every spring from then on, the Israelites must celebrate the holiday of Pesach, Skipover (“Passover” in the King James translation), by remembering the exodus from Egypt, eating matzah, and not eating leaven for seven days.⁴

Only later does the Exodus story say that as their firstborn sons died, the Egyptians panicked and urged the Israelites to leave the country at once.

The people picked up their dough before it could become chameitz, their kneading-troughs wrapped up in their cloaks upon their shoulders. … And they baked the dough that they had taken from Egypt in rounds of matzot, for it was not chameitz because they were banished from Egypt and they could not delay, and they had not even prepared provisions for themselves. (Exodus 12:34, 39)

matzot (מַצּוֹת) = plural of matzah; unleavened flatbread.

chameitz (חָמֵץ) = leavened bread, leavened food.

This is a post-hoc explanation of what God had already decreed. (See my post Pesach: Being Unleavened, Part 2.) Why does God call for seven days of matzah in the first place?

Modern scholars suspect that three thousand years ago, before the book of Exodus was written, farmers in Canaan celebrated Chag HaMatzot, the festival of unleavened flatbread. Their barley was ripe and their wheat was ripening. So they threw out their old bread and sourdough starter, and ate matzah made with fresh flour from new grain.

So anyone in Canaan who felt attached to the original, ancient matzah festival got to keep on doing it.

Observance at the first temple

In the book of Deuteronomy, God says that all the Israelites have to slaughter their Pesach lambs at one place: the temple in Jerusalem.⁵

You must slaughter a pesach for God, your God, [from] flock and herd, in the place where God chooses to settle [God’s] name. You must not eat it with chameitz … (Deuteronomy 16:2-3)

In the long list of laws that God gives Moshe (“Moses” in English) at Mount Sinai is the requirement for a seven-day spring pilgrimage-festival called Chag HaMatzot. When God says: “And they will not appear before me empty-handed.” (Exodus 23:14), the implication is that people will bring offerings to an altar at a central location

Numbers 28:16-25 specifies extra offerings to be burned during the seven days of Pesach, but does not say where they should be burned. Apparently observance of Pesach at the temple in Jerusalem was neglected until the reign of King Yoshiyahu (“Josiah” in English) in the 7^th century B.C.E.

Only in the eighteenth year of King Yoshiyahu was this Pesach done for God in Jerusalem. (2 Kings 23:23)

Observance at the second temple

We do not know the details of the Pesach observance at the first temple. But we do know how Pesach was observed in Jerusalem during the second temple period, thanks to the Mishnah Pesachim, a collection of Pesach laws and rabbinic discussions of those laws written by Yehudah HaNasi about a hundred years after the fall of the second temple in 70 C.E.

Levites singing, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Pesach was one of three pilgrimage festivals, when groups of people came to Jerusalem to make offerings at the temple and celebrate. A group consisted of family members, their slaves if any, and sometimes their friends. For Pesach, the spring pilgrimage festival, they came with lambs or money to buy lambs (or goat kids). The head of each household (or his delegate) brought the animal to the temple courtyard to be slaughtered after the usual afternoon offerings to God were completed. Priests collected the blood of the Pesach lambs or kids in gold and silver basins, and sprinkled it on the altar. Then the people flayed their own animals, hanging them on hooks fixed in the walls. They removed the fatty parts, as in a normal shelamim or wholeness offering, and gave them to priests, who burned them on the altar to make smoke for God. Meanwhile, Levites sang the prescribed psalms.⁶

The men then brought the sanctified carcasses to their homes (if they lived in Jerusalem), or to the buildings in Jerusalem where they had rented rooms or parts of large halls (if they had come from out of town). As darkness fell, each one roasted his carcass whole, on a spit in an oven inside the building.⁷ Then his group (including slaves) feasted on the roasted meat with matzah and bitter herbs, as in the book of Exodus.

They also drank wine diluted with hot water.⁸ But they probably did not stand upright while eating, as God instructs the Israelites to do on their last night in Egypt. The Mishnah Pesachim notes that only the first Pesach required daubing blood on doorframes or eating in haste.⁹ We do not know whether the Israelites during the time of the second temple sat or reclined as they ate.

Home observance in the mishnah

The tenth and final chapter of Mishnah Pesachim describes how to observe Pesach at home, in a ritual resembling a symposium held in an upper-class Roman home. In a symposium, the host and guests lay on their left sides on couches, propped up on their left elbows, while servants waited on them. As they ate and drank, they followed a traditional format for discussing a topic chosen by the host.

Jews observing Pesach always had the same discussion topic, the liberation of the Israelites in the Torah portion Bo in Exodus. For them, certain foods (such as matzah and bitter herbs) were required, and others (any grain product with leaven were forbidden. Few Jews had servants waiting on them, but if they did, their servants ate and drank the same things they did.

Before the Pesach ritual began, Jews were required to search their homes for chameitz by the light of an oil lamp (or candle) and eliminate it before sundown—by eating it, feeding it to animals, selling it to a non-Jew, or burning it.¹⁰

Eating roasted meat became optional, since the meat was no longer sanctified at the temple.¹¹ Both the search for chameitz and the option to avoid meat remain today. Many of the other rules for the home Pesach ritual in chapter 10 of Mishnah Pesachim are also observed to this day:

Reclining on one’s left side, like free and wealthy Romans—except that today we sit in a chair and lean to the left at certain points in the seder, or lean back on a cushion.
Eating chazeret, matzah, and charoset (a mixture made of fruit and wine). (In the Mishnah, the chazeret or bitter lettuce is dipped in something and eaten first. In today’s Pesach seder, any spring vegetable, called karpas, is dipped in salt water and eaten first. , matzah, and charoset (a mixture made of fruit and wine). (In the Mishnah, the chazeret or bitter lettuce is dipped in something and eaten first. In today’s Pesach seder, any spring vegetable, called karpas, is dipped in salt water and eaten first. Lettuce is still made available, to be used as the karpas or as a bitter herb.)
Drinking four cups of wine.
Reciting or singing the blessing for the holiday with the blessing for the first cup.
A son asking his father, after the second cup is poured, why this night is different from all other nights. (The Mishnah gives the father three prompts if the son does not come up with his own questions: why we dip twice, why we eat only matzah, and why we eat only meat roasted in fire. Today four questions are prescribed for the youngest child: why we eat only matzah, why we eat bitter herbs, why we dip our vegetables twice, and why we recline.)
Telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, starting with “An Aramean …” (See my post Ki Tavo: A Perishing Aramean on this ambiguous verse, Deuteronomy 26:5.)
Quoting Rabbi Gamliel: “Whoever does not make mention of these three things on Pesach does not fulfill his duty. And these are they: the pesach, matzah, and bitter herbs. The pesach because God passed over the houses of our fathers in Egypt. The matzah because our fathers were redeemed from Egypt. The bitter herb because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our fathers in Egypt. In every generation a man is obligated to regard himself as though he personally had gone forth from Egypt, because it is said, “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt”¹²
Reciting or singing the psalms of the Haleil that were once sung by Levites at the temple for joyful holidays.
Reciting or singing the blessings after the meal with the third cup of wine.

Additional observances from the first millennium

Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, a midrash on the book of Exodus compiled around 200 C.E., claims there are four types of sons in the story of the exodus from Egypt —the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the son who does not know how to ask. This midrash also prescribes what the father should say to each type of son. To this day, every haggadah (הַגָּדָה = telling: a script with instructions, sayings, and prayers for all the steps of the Pesach seder) includes a version of that midrash.

The books of mishnah led to later rabbinic discussions called the gemara, which were recorded in abbreviated form by around 500 C.E.. The mishnah and gemara together make the complete Talmud, in two versions: Talmud Bavli and Talmud Yerushalmi.¹³ The gemara in the Talmud Bavli tractate Pesachim includes a few more elements that are found today in every Pesach seder:

Washing hands twice: once before dipping and eating the karpas, and once before dipping and eating the bitter herbs. (Pesachim 115a-b)
Reciting Deuteronomy 16:3 about the bread of affliction or poverty. (Pesachim 115b)
Repeating Rabbi Yochanan’s statement that we eat charoset in remembrance of the mortar used by the Jews for their forced labor in Egypt. (Pesachim 116a)
Lifting the matzah and the bitter herbs when quoting Rabbi Gamliel. (Pesachim 116b)
Eating a bit of matzah last, after dessert. (Pesachim 119b-120a)

The gemara in the Talmud Yerushalmi tractate Pesachim 10:1 explains the four cups of wine as corresponding to God’s four promises of redemption in Exodus 6:6-7: “… I will bring you out … I will rescue you … I will redeem you … I will take you …” This explanation is also a standard part of today’s Pesach seder.

But there is a fifth promise of redemption in Exodus 6:8: “And I will bring you into the land …”

Some medieval rabbis connected this with the mention of a fifth cup of wine in the gemara in the Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 118a, arguing that it was not a scribal error, but an indication that a fifth cup should be poured, but not necessarily drunk, since the redemption of the Jews is not yet complete. The fifth cup became known as the cup of Eliyahu (“Elijah” in English), because of the legend that someday that prophet will return to resolve all disputes and to usher in the messiah or messianic age. At our seders today, we always pour a cup of wine for Eliyahu —and open the door briefly in case he shows up.

Additional observances from the second millennium

Two plagues illustrated in the Rylands Haggadah, 17th century Spain

The ten plagues inflicted upon Egypt are naturally part of the story told after the second cup of wine is poured. The custom of removing one drop of wine from the cup for each plague was first mentioned in a Pesach sermon by Rabbi Eleazer of Worms (1176-1238). But it was Rabbi Yirmiyahu Löw (1812-1874) who wrote that we do it in sympathy for the Egyptians, a sentiment found in many a haggadah today.

The first haggadah in the modern sense of a script for every step in the seder, with midrash, may have been the one Rabbi Amram Gaon wrote around 850 C.E.. But thousands of haggadot have been written since then, adding new elements and omitting others. The process continues in the 21^st century. This year, for example, some Jews are planning to add an olive to the seder plate exhibited before the ritual begins, to express hope for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

The celebration of Pesach has gradually changed over three millennia, but every haggadah includes the statement Avadim hayinu: “We were slaves”. Because the underlying purpose of Pesach is to teach the importance of liberation from slavery and oppression. We have needed that message for thousands of years, and we still need it now.

Pesach lasts seven days in Exodus 12:15-20 and to this day in Israel, but some communities outside Israel celebrate it for eight days.
See my post Pesach, Metzora, & Chukat: Blood and Oregano.
Exodus 12:11.
Exodus 12:14-20.
See my post Re-eih & Isaiah: Only in Jerusalem.
Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 5.
Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 7.
Ibid.
Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 9.
Mishnah Pesachim, chapters 1 and 2.
Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 4.
Exodus 13:8.
Talmud Bavli is the version recorded by rabbis living in Babylon, the city called Bavel in Hebrew. Talmud Yerushalmi is the version recorded during the same period by the rabbis living in Palestine, especially in Jerusalem, the city called Yerushalayim in Hebrew.

Tzav: Horns, Ears, Thumbs, Toes

Building an altar, lighting a fire, and offering an animal or some grain to God is an act of worship that any man can perform in the book of Genesis. But after the first such offerings, by Kayin (“Cain” in English) and Hevel (“Abel”), the honors go to the man who is the head of household. In the book of Exodus, Moshe (“Moses” in English) does the offering, except when Moshe’s father-in-law Yitro visits.¹

But God gives Moshe instructions for a different approach to worship when Moshe spends his first forty-day stint on top of Mount Sinai.² Instead of building a stone altar just anywhere, offerings must all be made at a single communal altar, which will be made of acacia wood overlaid with copper (or a copper alloy). This altar will be transported to each new campsite to be used again.

It will stand in the courtyard in front of the mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן = dwelling-place), a holy structure that will be reassembled at each campsite. The back chamber of the mishkan, the Holy of Holies, is where God will dwell above the ark. The front chamber is where priests wearing special vestments will light the menorah, lay out bread on the table, and burn incense. Furthermore, every offering at the altar will require the presence of at least one ordained priest.

In this week’s Torah portion of Leviticus, Tzav (Leviticus/Vayikra 6:1-8:36), Moshe carries out God’s instructions for ordaining the first priests, and simultaneously inaugurates the mishkan and the new altar. He uses the same two liquids: anointing oil (pure olive oil with fragrant spices mixed in), and blood. (See my post Tzav: Oil and Blood.)

Anointing oil

The ceremony in this week’s Torah portion takes place near the altar in front of the curtained entrance of the mishkan. Moshe assembles everything needed for the ceremony, including a bull, two rams, and the special anointing oil. He summons the elders into the courtyard as witnesses. Then he washes and dresses the first five priests: his brother Aharon (“Aaron” in English) and Aharon’s four sons. He interrupts the dressing process to anoint the mishkan and every item inside it with the oil, and he also spatters oil on the copper altar, its tools, and its base. Only then does Moshe pour anointing oil over Aharon, who will be the first high priest.³

Anointing blood

Since Aharon and his sons are not yet officially priests, Moshe slaughters the animals for the rest of the ceremony. First comes the bull for the guilt-offering (chatat, חַטָּאת). The purpose of this offering is to purify the altar in case anything unauthorized happened to it between the time it was made and the day of its inauguration, and to purify the new priests in case they have inadvertently failed to follow one of God’s many rules. The general principle in the book of Leviticus is that one cannot be too careful when dealing with God.

Then he brought forward the bull of the guilt-offering, and Aharon and his sons leaned their hands on the head of the bull of the guilt-offering. (Leviticus 8:14)

By leaning (or laying) their hands on the head of the bull, the five new priests magically or symbolically transfer some of their spirit or identity to the bull, so that when the bull is offered to God, they are offering part of themselves to God.

Then he slaughtered it. And Moshe took the blood and put it on the karnot of the altar, all around, with his finger. Thus he removed guilt from the altar. And he poured the blood at the foundation of the altar. Thus he made it holy, for making atonement upon it [through future offerings]. (Leviticus 8:15)

karnot (קַרְנוֹת) = horns, rays of light. (Plural of keren, קֶרֶן = horn of an animal; animal horn used to hold oil; ray of light; a symbol of strength and power.

Stone model of altar, Megiddo, 9th century

Horns were a common feature of altars in the Ancient Near East. The altar fashioned at Mount Sinai is a box, five cubits (about 3 ½ feet) square, with a grating to hold animal parts over a fire. Its horns (also copper) protrude from each of the four corners at the top.

Moshe burns all the fatty parts of the bull on the newly-purified altar to make smoke for God. Then the five future priests lean their hands on one of the rams, the one for the standard rising-offering (olah, עֺלָה), which Moshe completely burns up after splashing its blood against the four sides of the altar.

Then he brought forward the second ram, the ram of the miluim. And Aharon and his sons leaned their hands on the head of the ram. (Leviticus 8:22)

miluim (מִלֱֻאִים) = filling up; inserting something in its setting; consecration or ordination. (From the root verb malei, מָלֵא = fill, fulfill.)

And Moshe slaughtered it. And he took some of its blood and put it on the rim of Aharon’s right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the thumb of his right foot [i.e. his right big toe]. Then he brought near the sons of Aharon, and Moshe put some of the blood on the rims of their right ears, the thumbs of their right hands, and the thumbs of their right feet. Then he dashed [the rest of] the blood on the altar, all around. (Leviticus 8:22-24)

After the offering that includes the second ram is completed,

Then Moshe took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood that was on the altar, and he sprinkled [them] on Aharon, on Aharon’s garments, on his sons, and on his sons’ garments with him. Thus he made holy Aharon, Aharon’s garments, his sons, and his sons’ garments with him. (Leviticus 8:30)

After that, the new priests must stay at the entrance of the mishkan for seven days to complete their ordination.

Extremities

Moshe consecrates everything in the mishkan, then the altar and its tools, and the high priest with the same anointing oil. But the distribution of blood is more elaborate. The altar gets bull’s blood on the horns at its four corners, then at its foundation or footing. The men get ram’s blood on their right ears, right thumbs, and right big toes.

According to Plaut, “The original intent was probably one of ritual purification; and the extremities served as a kind of summary for the entire body … ‘from top to toe.’”⁴

On this theory, applying blood to the altar’s top extremities (its horns) and its bottom foundation symbolically purifies the entire altar, too.

But human beings have lots of extremities. Why does the Torah specify the ear, thumb, and big toe—especially the thumb, which is halfway between a human’s head and foot?

In the first century C.E., Philo of Alexandria explained it in terms of purity: “In this figure, he indicated that the fully consecrated must be pure in words and actions and in his whole life; for words are judged by hearing, the hand is the symbol of action, and the foot of the pilgrimage of life.”⁵

In the 19^th century, Hirsch wrote about it as a challenge for the priest: “The ear (hearing and understanding), the hand (creative work), the foot (striving to advance)—those are the primary areas in which a personality invested with the honor of leading the community, like a ram at the head of the flock, must prove itself.”⁶

And in the 20^th century, Hertz put it in terms of God: “The ear was touched with blood, that it may be consecrated to hear the word of God; the hand, to perform the duties of the priesthood; and the foot, to walk in the path of righteousness.”⁷

The four horns of the copper altar are in fact its highest extremities, but they are also symbolic. Since they are shaped like animal horns, they are a reminder of the horns of the cattle, sheep, and goats sacrificed there. But the horns also might stand for the altar’s connection with the divine, evoking the idea of powerful rays of light pointing up toward the heavens—or down toward the altar.

Moses also pours the blood of purification on the foundation, or footing, of the altar. Both the priests and the altar must be pure where they reach toward heaven, and also where they have their feet (indicated by the big toe) on the ground. Only then can they be holy intermediaries between God and the people.

The method for consecrating priests described in the portion Tzav has not been used for almost two thousand years. But people still look for human intermediaries to help them connect to the ineffable, whether they are officially ordained priests, pastors, imams, rabbis, and so forth, or informal spiritual teachers who seem to (and may actually) know more than the average person. The responsibility of religious leadership can be unnerving, at least for those with enough humility to deserve the job. Actually, any position of authority and influence over others is a heavy duty.

May all leaders develop the habits of listening before speaking, of offering an open hand without grasping, and of walking slowly enough to make course corrections.

Exodus 18:12
Exodus 25:1-31:18.
Leviticus 8:10-12.
Bernard Bamberger, in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, ed. by W Gunther Plaut, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 1981, p. 797.
Philo of Alexandria, circa 20 BCE – c. 50 CE, On the Life of Moses, II:150, quoted in Plaut, ibid.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, 19^th century, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem & New York, 2002, p.689.
J.H. Hertz, ed., The Pentateuch and Haftarahs, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1936, quoted in Plaut, ibid.
E.g. 1 Samuel 2:10, Jeremiah 48:25, Psalm 75:5, Psalm 89:18.

(An earlier version of this essay was published in 2010.)

Haftarat Vakikra—Isaiah: Anthropomorphic Monotheism

Akkadian cylinder seal with gods Inanna, Enki, and Utu, ca. 2300 BCE

Polytheism was the norm in the Ancient Near East. Throughout the region, people believed there were many gods, and although it was important to worship the god that was the patron of your own territory, you also appealed to other gods affecting your life. These gods and goddesses had vast powers and were not easy to see, but they looked like humans or human-animal hybrids. They felt the full range of human emotions, and acted like humans—eating and drinking, having sex and children, fighting with weapons, and so forth—but on a grand scale.

Most of the Hebrew Bible does not challenge this anthropomorphic polytheism. There are references to other gods besides the God of Israel—inferior gods who must submit to God’s authority.¹ Regardless of the existence of other gods, the Israelites are required to worship only their own God.

The books of Deuteronomy² and Isaiah, however, include clear statements of monotheism.

This week’s haftarah (reading from the Prophets accompanying the Torah portion) is Isaiah 43:21–44:23, a passage from “Second Isaiah”³ which declares that the God of Israel is the only god there is. But that does not mean that God is an abstract, incorporeal omnipresence with no human functions or body parts.

The haftarah begins by noting that the Israelites have not been making offerings to God. (This provides the rationale for pairing the reading with this week’s Torah portion, Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1-5:26), a procedure manual for four kinds of offerings.⁴) Then comes a brief statement of monotheism. After that God ridicules people who believe that their hand-made idols are gods.

The sections before and after the declaration of monotheism reveal that the author still has an anthropomorphic view of God.

A dearth of offerings

The haftarah opens with God saying:

This people I formed for myself;
My praise they should declare!
But you have not invoked me, Yaakov,
For you are weary of me, Yisrael. (Isaiah 43:21-22)

In the book of Genesis the ancestor of the Israelites is named Yaakov, “Jacob” in English, and also Yisrael, “Israel” in English. Subsequent biblical books use either of his names to refer to the Israelites as a whole.

What counts as praising and invoking, God explains, is burning edibles into smoke that rises into the skies:

You have not brought me sheep for your complete-burned-offerings
	  And you have not honored me with your animal-slaughters.
I did not burden you with grain-offerings,
	  And I did not make you weary about frankincense.
You have not used silver to buy incense ingredients for me,
	  And you have not hirvitani with the fat of your slaughters.
Instead, you have burdened me with your misdeeds;
	  You have made me weary with your depravities. (Isaiah 43:23-24)

hirvitani (הִרְוִתָנִי) = intoxicated me, sated me with drink. (A form of the verb ravah, רָוַה = drunk one’s fill.)

In other words, God misses “drinking up” the smoke from the fat of the animals sacrificed at the altar. The implication is that God has a throat, and a physical mind (which people in the Ancient Near East located in the organ of the heart) that can become intoxicated.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayikra (which, like Second Isaiah, may also have been written in the 6^th century B.C.E.) prescribes the correct procedures for making four kinds of offerings at the altar in front of the temple in Jerusalem. For every kind of offering, it says that God enjoys smelling the smoke.⁵ The first reference to God’s act of smelling comes at the end of the instructions for sacrificing a bull as a rising offering:

And the sons of Aharon, the priests, will arrange the pieces, the head and the fat, on the wood that is on the fire that is on the altar … and the priest will burn up all of it into smoke at the altar: a rising-offering, a fire-offering, a soothing smellfor God. (Leviticus 1:8-9)

Although later readers of the Hebrew Bible interpreted descriptions of God drinking or smelling as metaphors, it is likely that the authors of both Leviticus and Second Isaiah still thought of God as having a nose and a throat, even though humans could not see them. In this week’s haftarah, God misses smelling the smoke rising up from the altar, and accuses the Israelites of not doing their job.

Yet these Israelites are living in captivity in Babylonia, roughly a thousand miles away from the temple in Jerusalem. Seven verses before the haftarah begins, God promises to redeem them, saying:

For your sake I send to Babylon,
          and I will take down her bars [across the doors], all of them! (Isaiah 43:14)

How can God blame the Israelites for failing to burn offerings at the temple? Perhaps Second Isaiah agrees with the book of Ezekiel, also written in the 6^th century B.C.E. during the Babylonian captivity, which criticizes the negligence and idol worship of the priests in Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. Or perhaps Second Isaiah is pointing out that even in Babylon, the Israelites could at least burn incense for their God.

After commenting in this week’s haftarah that the Israelites have not been burdened with offerings, but nevertheless have burdened God with their misdeeds, God adds:

I, I am the one who wipes away your transgressions for my own sake,
          And your misdeeds I will not recall. (Isaiah 43:25)

The current misdeeds of the Israelites probably include worshiping foreign Babylonian gods. According to Plaut, “Undoubtedly there were many among them who doubted that God would redeem them, and they began to revert to the worship of idols.”⁵

Monotheism

After promising to pour the divine spirit on the children of the Israelites and bless them with fertility, God pauses to establish unequivocally that there are no other gods.

Thus said God, the king of Yisrael and their redeemer, God of Armies:
“I am the first and I am the last,
	And besides me, there is no god.” (Isaiah 44:6)

Idols versus the real thing

After a couple of obscure verses that seem intended to reinforce the idea that there is no other god, God begins a long criticism of idols:

[What] the shapers of a pesel [make] is entirely unreal,
          and what they find desirable has no benefit.
          And they themselves are witnesses!
They [idols] cannot see and they cannot think.
          On account of that they should be ashamed!
Who would shape a god or cast a pesel
          that has no benefit?
Hey, all its worshipers should be ashamed.
          And the artisans, they are human ... (Isaiah 44:9-11)

pesel (פֶּסֶל) = idol; a three-dimensional image in the likeness of a human and/or animal representing a god.

A real god would be able to see and think like a human being—like the God of Israel. After pointing out that artisans in both iron and wood are only human, and have no special power to make gods, God says that a wood-carver uses some of his wood to build a fire for cooking.

And the rest he makes as a god, as his pesel.
          He bows down to it, and prostrates himself to it,
And he prays to it, and he says:
          “Rescue me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:17)

The idol-makers, God says, are deficient in both the sense of sight and in common sense:

They do not know and they do not discern,
          for their eyes are plastered over from seeing,
          their minds separated from understanding. (Isaiah 44:18)

The hierarchy is established. Idols made of metal or wood cannot see, cannot think, and cannot rescue anyone. Human beings can see and can think, but are often unable to rescue themselves; the Israelites deported to Babylon could not rescue themselves from captivity. But God can see, can think, and can rescue human beings.

Does that mean God has eyes, as well as a nose that smells and a heart (brain) that can both think and get intoxicated? In “First Isaiah”, God threatens:

And when you spread out your hands,
          I will hide my eyes from you.
Also, if  you multiply your prayers,
          I will not listen.
Your hands are full of bloodshed!” (Isaiah 1:15)

Later in the book of Isaiah, the king of Judah prays for God to rescue to his kingdom from the Assyrians by saying:

“Incline your ear, God, and hear! Open your eye, God, and see!” (Isaiah 37:17)

The author of this week’s haftarah probably shared the conception of God as having eyes, ears, nose, and throat—not made of flesh, like a human’s, but with similar shapes and functions,

Even today many monotheists picture God as a man with a flowing white beard, floating in some inaccessible region of the sky. If you ask, they will quickly say that of course God is invisible and not a physical being, although God has power over physical things. They might also say that God is everywhere—and in the next breath, talk about God “looking down” on us.

The belief that there is only one god is easier to maintain than the belief that God is not anthropomorphic.

See my posts Bereishit: How Many Gods?, Yitro & Psalms 29, 82, & 97: Greater Than Other Gods, and Haftarot for Vayikra & Tzav—Isaiah & Jeremiah: Useless Gods.
Deuteronomy 4:35, 10:14, and 32:39. Some people also interpret the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4, as a statement that there is only one god, but other interpretations are also valid.
The book of Isaiah consists of works by at least three prophets writing in different eras. “First Isaiah”, attributed to Yeshayahu (“Isaiah” in English) son of Amotz in Isaiah 1:1, was written in the 8^th century B.C.E., when the kingdom of Judah was threatened by the Assyrian Empire. “Second Isaiah” begins with either chapter 34 or chapter 40, and was written by an unknown author in the 6^th century B.C.E. after the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar razed Jerusalem and deported many of its citizens to Babylonia.
The offerings described in the portion Vayikra are the olah, in which a bull, ram, billy-goat, or bird is completely burned into smoke in order to win God’s favor (Leviticus 1:2-17); the minchah, in which something made of grain without leaven is given to the priests, who burn a token portion for God (Leviticus 2:1-16); the shelamim, an expression of gratitude to God in which an animal’s fat parts are burned up into smoke for God but the meat is eaten by both priests and the donor’s party (Leviticus 3:1-17); and various chatat offerings burned to expiate eleven kinds of guilt (Leviticus 4:1-5:26).
See my post Pinchas: Aromatherapy.
W. Gunther Plaut, The Haftarah Commentary, translated by Chaim Stern, UAHC Press, New York, 1996, p. 232.

Vayakheil: Darker Than a Tent

ohel (אֹהֶל) = tent; an easily dismantled dwelling for nomads and/or shepherds.

ohel mo-eid (אֺהֶל מוֹעֵד) = Tent of Meeting, Tent of Appointment. Most often, the temporary structure that God inhabits in the center of the Israelite camp from Mount Sinai to Shiloh in Canaan.¹

tent = “a collapsible shelter of fabric (such as nylon or canvas) stretched and sustained by poles and used for camping outdoors or as a temporary building” (Merriam Webster 2026)

For years I assumed that the ohel mo-eid was a ancient version of the tent we erect today for a special event outdoors—a framework of metal poles covered with white plasticized cloth, sometimes with clear plastic windows, and an opening at one end. We bring folding chairs into these tents, and maybe folding tables or a portable stage with a sound system, the cords snaking out under the bottom of the tent fabric. For a nighttime event we add electric lights, but by day plenty of light comes through the white roof and walls.

The framework of the ohel mo-eid was made with well-spaced timber studs, I used to think, and fabric was draped over this framework inside and out. Then two layers of leather were added to the roof for waterproofing. So no light would come through the ceiling, but light would filter through the goat-hair fabric outside walls and the tapestry inside walls.

I almost had it right. But this year I looked at the measurements, and discovered my mistake.

The box

This week’s Torah reading combines the last two portions in the book of Exodus, Vayakheil (Exodus/Shemot 35:1-38:20) and Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38), in which the Israelites craft and assemble the ohel mo-eid as a dwelling-place for God. The description of the process is almost identical with the instructions God gave to Moshe (“Moses” in English) earlier in Exodus, in the portion Terumah, and no easier to follow. The Torah describes the measurements and the materials of the constituent parts, but only vaguely indicates how they are put together. So first let me describe the ohel mo-eid when it is already assembled.

Imagine a box 10 cubits wide,10 cubits high, and 30 cubits long. (10 cubits is roughly 15 feet or 3.3 meters.) The long walls face north and south; the short walls face east and west. This structure, about as big as a one-bedroom apartment with very high ceilings, is made out of boards of acacia wood. A giant cloth is draped over the outside of the box, covering the top and hanging down over the walls on three sides. The front end consist of five wood pillars and a curtain.

To make the giant cloth covering, Israelite women weave eleven lengths of fabric out of undyed goat hair, each one 30 cubits long by 4 cubits wide. (Four cubits was the standard width of an Egyptian loom.) They fasten these together into a single rectangle that measures 30 by 44 cubits.

After the goat-hair cloth has been draped over the wood structure, two layers of leather are laid across the roof.²

Inside, the structure is divided into two rooms by a colorful curtain hanging from the ceiling. The back room, the Holy of Holies, is 10 cubits square, and contains only the gold-plated ark—and God’s manifestation above the ark, in the space between the two gold sculptures that rise at either end of the lid.³ The front room is 20 cubits by 10 cubits, and contains the lampstand (menorah), the bread table, and the incense altar.⁴

The inside is what counts

The description of making the ohel mo-eid in the portion Vayakheil this week begins, like God’s instructions in the earlier portion Terumah, with the inside tapestry, not with the supporting wooden structure.

Then everyone wise of mind among the makers of the work made the mishkan. Of ten cloths of twisted fine linen and blue and red-violet and scarlet [wool], in a design of keruvim they made them.⁵ (Exodus 36:8)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling-place (usually God’s dwelling place, “tabernacle” in English).

keruvim (כְּרֻבִים) = hybrid beasts with wings and human faces.

Each of the ten tapestries is 28 cubits long by 4 cubits wide (about 42 feet by 6 feet, or 12.8 by 2 meters). Five cloths are sewn together into one large hanging measuring 28 cubits by 20 cubits, and the other five cloths are sewn into a similar hanging. Loops of blue yarn were sewn down one edge of each large hanging.

Then they made fifty clasps of gold, and they joined the hangings to one another with the clasps. And the mishkan became one piece. (Exodus 36:13)

Apparently what counts as God’s mishkan is the space defined by the interior tapestries hanging over a packed-earth floor. A wooden structure is required to hold up the tapestries, and the completed “tent” will have other material draped over the exterior. But the beautiful tapestries define God’s dwelling-place. Appearances matter.

Wooden walls

The middle 10 cubits of the combined tapestry makes the cloth ceiling of the mishkan. That leaves 9 cubits of tapestry hanging down on each side, in front of the long north and south wooden walls. At the back end, the leftover tapestry hangs down in front of the west wall. (The folds of fabric that would naturally form at the right-angle corners in back are not mentioned in the Torah.)

Between the bottom of the tapestry and the packed-earth floor, there is a gap of one cubit—about 18 inches. So a priest would see about 18 inches of the wooden framework at the bottom of the wall. (On the outside, the large goat-hair covering would come down to the ground.)

What does the wooden part of the ohel mo-eid look like?

And they made the planks for the mishkan of acacia wood, standing upright: ten cubits the length of the plank, and one and a half cubits the width of each plank. Two pegs for each plank, parallel one to one; thus they did for all the planks of the mishkan. (Exodus 36:20-22)

Each plank is a cubit and a half wide—about 27 inches. Two pegs (or tenons) come out of the bottom end of each plank.

And they made the planks for the mishkan: 20 planks for the Negev side, to the south. (Exodus 36:23)

Imagine 20 boards standing upright, each board a cubit and a half wide. If each plank touches its neighbors, it would make a continuous wall 30 cubits long—the exact length of the mishkan’s interior. Therefore (I realized this year) there are no gaps between the planks.

And they made 40 silver adanim underneath the 20 planks, two adanim under each plank for its two pegs, and two adanim under each [other] plank for its two pegs. (Exodus 36:24)

adanim (אֲדָנִים) = sockets; pedestals.

The two pegs (tenons) at the bottom of each plank fit into two sockets (mortises) in the base under the wall. Probably the base consists of a row of pedestals with sockets carved into them.

The long northern wall is the same as the southern wall. The short western wall in the back, behind the ark, is also continuous wood planking: six regular planks and two corner-posts.

Next the Torah describes how the planks are secured at the top.

And they made running-bars of acacia wood, five running-bars for the planks on one side of the mishkan, and five running-bars for the planks on the second side of the mishkan, and five running-bars for the planks of the mishkan at the rear, toward the sea. And they made a middle running-bar, to run amidst the planks from end to end. (Exodus 36:31-33)

We never learn where all these running-bars are positioned. Perhaps running-bars along the tops of the wooden walls hold up the ceiling section of the tapestry.

Only after this obscure description do we find out that the bars are attached to the planks with gold rings.

And they overlaid the planks with gold, and they made rings of gold as receptacles for the running-bars, and thy overlaid the running-bars with gold. (Exodus 36:34)

Maybe all the running-bars are visible, pinning the tapestry close to the wooden wall. That would explain why they are overlaid with gold. But it seems wasteful to apply gold leaf to the entire surface of each plank, instead of just the bottom end visible under the tapestry.

Next the Torah portion describes the colorful curtain that will separate the mishkan into two rooms, with the Holy of Holies in back. This curtain is framed by four pillars of gold-covered acacia wood, each on its own silver pedestal.

Last comes the description of the front of the structure, facing east.

Then they made a screen for the entrance of the ohel, of blue, red-violet, scarlet, and white linen: the making of an embroiderer. And they overlaid their five pillars and their clasps and their binding-rings with gold, and their five adanim with copper. (Exodus 36:37-38)

Low lighting

No natural light can filter through the roof of the ohel mo-eid, since it is covered with leather. And no natural light can penetrate the solid wood walls on three sides of the building; at best, there might be thin cracks of light at the bottom, between pedestals. Daylight would only filter through the embroidered screen covering the front entrance.

Unlike a portable party tent today, the ohel mo-eid would be dim, even dark, inside during the day.

There are no electric lights, of course, but the priests must light the seven oil lamps of the menorah every sunset, and let them burn until sunrise.⁶ Since the front room is 20 cubits or 30 feet long, the back corners of the room would remain in shadow.

Furthermore, the smoke from the incense the high priest burns inside the mishkan would rise toward the ceiling, which has no hole or chimney. When the Israelites camp in the same place for days, the mishkan would fill up with smoke. All of its gold furnishings and colorful tapestry could only be glimpsed through the dim and smoky light.

The interior of the ohel mo-eid is designed to please God, so that God will be content to dwell there. The only human beings who see the inside of the mishkan are the priests: Aharon (“Aaron” in English) and his sons, and eventually his grandsons. They need to be reminded that their duties inside the sacred space are holy, and must be taken very seriously.⁷ Seeing the golden furnishings and the elaborate tapestries and the curtain hiding the ark in dim light, through the smoke of incense, would add to the feeling of mystery.⁸

But all the Israelites can see the exterior of the ohel mo-eid. On three sides they see only goat-hair cloth, unornamented. In front, behind the outdoor altar, they see the entrance: a fabric screen, elaborately embroidered in vivid blue, red-violet, and scarlet. This is enough to indicate that something royal and amazing is inside, enough so that they can believe God dwells there.

I think that if the entire tent, including the entrance, were covered with nothing but undyed goat-hair, it would be harder to summon the feeling of God’s presence. Personally, I feel uplifted in a forest, or in a gothic cathedral (as long as I igore the statues representing a religion that is not my own). If I attend a Jewish service in a room with no more glamor than a high school cafeteria, I try to avoid looking up from my prayerbook. A view of a large, colorful embroidery would help a lot, with or without keruvim.

Appearance matters.

For exceptions see last week’s post, Ki Tisa: Meeting Outside the Camp.
See my post Terumah: Under Cover.
See my post Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day.
See my posts Terumah: Bread of Faces, Terumah: Tree of Light, and Terumah: Wood Inside.
In Exodus 36:8-36:37 the text literally says “he made” (asah, אָשָׂה) when it means “they made”, and says “and he made” (vaya-as, וַיַּאַשׂ) when it means “and they made”—perhaps because Moshe is ultimately responsible for everyone’s work, or perhaps due to scribal carelessness.
Exodus 27:20-21, Leviticus 21:3-4.
See my post Shemini: Follow the Rules.
When it is time to break camp, dismantle the ohel mo-eid, and journey on, the priests must cover the ark, menorah, bread table, and incense altar first, in the dim light. See my post Bemidbar: Don’t Look.

Ki Tisa: Meeting Outside the Camp

Following God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night gets the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai. But then the divine pillar disappears, and God terrifies the people with an earth-shaking, volcanic, deafening revelation. God dictates dozens of laws that to Moshe (“Moses” in English), and the Israelites all agree to do whatever God says.

Altar and high priest, from Treasures of the Bible, Northrop, 1894

Moshe climbs Mount Sinai and spends 40 days in the cloud at the top, listening to God’s instructions for a new, centralized religion. Previously, families burned their own offerings to God at their own stone altars. Now there will be a single bronze altar in front of a richly furnished sanctuary. Only consecrated priests are allowed to officiate at the altar or enter the sanctuary, which will be erected in the center of the camp.

The Torah portions Terumah and Tetzaveh consist entirely of directions for the sanctuary and its furnishings, and the priests’ vestments. The directions continue in the first part of this week’s portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).

By the fortieth day, the Israelites despair of ever seeing Moshe or God’s pillar of cloud again. So they make a golden calf to lead them to Canaan. When Moshe comes back down the mountain with the pair of stone tablets, he sees them carousing in front of their new idol. He smashes the tablets, grinds the idol into gold dust, adds water, and makes the people drink it. Then he orders the men of his own tribe, the Levites, to go through the camp and kill the offenders—about 3,000 people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Golden Calf, Stone Commandments.)

The next day, Moshe tries to get God to issue a blanket pardon for the surviving Israelites, but God sends a plague that kills more people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Seeking a Pardon.) Then he gives the survivors some bad news.

The plan changes

In the portion Terumah, God had begun his instructions for the sanctuary by telling Moshe:

“Then let them make for me a holy place, and I will dwell betocham.” (Exodus 25:8)

betocham (בְּתוֹכָם) = among them, in their midst.

This holy place or sanctuary (or “tabernacle” in English) is subsequently called God’s mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן = dwelling place) or God’s ohel mo-eid (אֺהֶל מוֹעֵד) = Tent of Meeting, Tent of Appointment. (See last week’s post, Tetzaveh: Meeting Place.)

But after the golden calf worship in this week’s Torah portion, God declares that a divine messenger will go ahead of the Israelites to Canaan, and drive out the native inhabitants—

“But I will not go up in your midst, since you are a stiff-necked people,¹ lest I finish you off on the way!” And the people heard this bad news, and they mourned, and no man put on his ornaments. (Exodus 33:3-4)

Hirsch wrote: “We see how deeply they felt about their spiritual calling and how deep-seated was their consciousness of it.”²

I think their need to believe that God is in their midst is not so much a “spiritual calling” as desperation—the desperation of people who have spent their whole lives enslaved in Egypt, and now find themselves in an alien wilderness, on their way to an unknown place. It helps to have Moshe back with them, but they know it is God who leads them and provides manna and water. Moshe still has not told the Israelites about God’s directions for centralized religious worship. As long as God refuses to go in their midst, there is no point in making an ohel mo-eid for God to dwell in.

A temporary Tent of Meeting

Then Moshe took³ the ohel and pitched it for himself outside the camp, putting it far away from the camp. And he called it the ohel mo-eid, and it happened: anyone seeking God was going out to the ohel mo-eid that was outside the camp. (Exodus 33:7)

ohel (אֺהֶל) = tent: either a tent for humans, or the ohel mo-eid for God.

The text does not say which tent Moshe pitches outside the camp, but it is not the elaborate ohel mo-eid that God originally planned. The classic commentary assumes that “the ohel” is Moshe’s own tent.

And in the 20^th century, Cassuto explained: “It was impossible for him to seclude himself with the Divine Presence in the Camp of Israel because the camp had been defiled by the sin of idolatry, so that God did not want to have His Divine Presence rest there. Hence Moshe took his tent and planted it outside the camp to serve him as a meeting place between himself and God.”⁴

But Steinsaltz wrote: “Moses continued to sleep in his family tent inside the camp. Every day he would leave that tent and pass through the camp to the Tent of Meeting outside.”⁵

In the rest of the Torah, “outside the camp” means either a ritually pure ash-heap where specific parts of certain sacrificial animals are burned;⁶ or an impure area where people with the skin disease tzara-at must live,⁷ where pieces of a moldy house are dumped,⁸ and where people are stoned to death after being sentenced for blaspheming God or Shabbat.⁹ But thanks to the golden calf worship, the camp itself is impure at this point in the story. The Israelites are used to “seeking God” in the camp by asking to Moshe to speak to God or tell them what God says. Now they have to walk to a tent outside the camp.

Deference

And it used to be when Moshe was going out to the Tent, all the people would rise; and they stationed themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent, and they gazed after Moshe until he entered the Tent. (Exodus 33:8)

Rising in someone’s presence is a way of honoring them, in the Torah and to this day. I imagine the Israelites gazing after Moshe with longing, feeling like outcasts because their leader has to leave them in order to speak with God.

Pillar of Cloud, by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, 1731

And it used to be when Moshe came into the tent, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance of the Tent, and [God] spoke with Moshe. And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the Tent, and all the people rose and prostrated themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent. (Exodus 33:9-10)

This is the first time God’s pillar of cloud has appeared since the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai. Now it shows up in front of the temporary Tent of Meeting every time Moshe goes inside, but the people cannot follow it. All they can do is prostrate themselves, bowing and flattening themselves on the ground in the accepted gesture for honoring a king or a god.

Cassuto wrote: “That is a sign that they were suffused with a spirit of repentance and complete faith in the Lord, their God, and His servant, Moshe. … because of this inclination towards repentance of theirs, the Children of Israel merited complete forgiveness …”¹⁰

Two men in the Tent

The narrative about the temporary Tent of Meeting concludes with a verse about both Moshe and Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English).

And God used to speak to Moshe face-to-face, as a man speaks to his fellow. Then he returned to the camp, but his personal attendant,¹¹ Yehoshua son of Nun, did not depart from within the Tent. (Exodus 33:11)

Moshe goes back into the camp periodically—perhaps to report what God says, perhaps to eat and sleep in his own family’s tent in camp, perhaps even to fetch food and water for his attendant Yehoshua, who lives inside the temporary Tent of Meeting full-time.

According to Sforno, Yehoshua stays there “in order to ensure that none of the Israelites would enter this tent, seeing all of them were in a state of disgrace”.¹²

If any of the refractory people whom God wants to avoid tried to enter the temporary ohel mo-eid, then God would boycott the tent, and Moshe could no longer talk with God there. But God does not object to Yehoshua’s presence in the Tent. Yehoshua was not even in camp when the Israelites worshiped the golden calf. He waited alone near the foot of the mountain until Moshe returned with the stone tablets.

Still, according to Hirsch: “To him, the pillar of cloud did not descend. Only when Moshe entered the tent did the pillar of cloud descend and stand at the entrance of the tent.”¹³

Two Tents of Meeting

Thus the story of the ohel mo-eid outside the camp can be explained as a natural interlude in the Torah portion Ki Tisa. Of course Moshe would erect a temporary Tent of Meeting after the golden calf fiasco, so he can continue to converse with God without climbing Mount Sinai. Then when he thinks God’s anger might have faded, he begs God to go in the midst of the Israelites after all, and God agrees.¹⁴

Moshe climbs the mountain one more time and returns with a second pair of stone tablets. Then the Israelites proceed to make the official ohel mo-eid according to God’s instructions, and pitch it in the center of their camp. Once it is complete, there will be no more need for a temporary ohel mo-eid.

Yet an ohel mo-eid outside the camp shows up again in the portion Beha-alotkha in the book of Numbers and in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy.

When Moshe complains that he cannot handle the Israelites all by himself, God says:

“Gather for me 70 men from the elders of Israel … and take them to the ohel mo-eid, and station them there with you. And I will draw from the spirit that is upon you, and place it upon them Then they will carry the burden of the people with you …” (Numbers 11:16-17)

After the elders have received the spirit of prophecy,

Then Moshe took himself back to the camp, he and the elders of Israel. (Numbers 11:30)

Obviously Moshe and the elders stand in front of an ohel mo-eid outside the camp, and then Moshe leads them back to the camp where the ohel mo-eid of the priests is.

Later in the same Torah portion, after Miriam and Aharon (“Aaron” in English) complain about their younger brother Moshe, God commands:

“Go, the three of you, to the ohel mo-eid!” And the three of them went. And God came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the ohel … (Numbers 12:4-5)

Just like in the portion Ki Tisa, God shows up as pillar of cloud at the entrance of the tent, not as a mysterious manifestation above the ark inside the Holy of Holies, the back chamber of the priests’ ohel mo-eid. The same thing happens in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy, when God commands Moshe:

“Call Yehoshua, and station yourselves at the ohel mo-eid, and I will give him orders.” And Moshe went, and Yehoshua, and they stationed themselves at the ohel mo-eid. And God appeared at the ohel in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance of the ohel.” (Deuteronomy 31:14-15)

Moshe is a Levite, but Yehoshua (“Joshua”) is from the tribe of Efrayim, and would not be allowed to even approach the entrance of the ohel mo-eid in the middle of the camp. In Ki Tisa, Yehoshua merely guards the Tent of Meeting, but in Deuteronomy Moshe is near the end of his life and Yehoshua is slated to lead the conquest of Canaan. So God speaks to both of them from the pillar of cloud.

All three of these stories take place after the Israelites have finished making the priests’ ohel mo-eid and journeyed north from Mount Sinai. The Torah offers no explanation of why there is still an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in these stories.

Modern source scholars agree that the brief scene in Ki Tisa about a Tent of Meeting outside the camp is an interruption in the account that comes from the “P source”, written by priests in the 6^th century B.C.E. or later. The P source is invested in a system of worship conducted by priests at a central location. The Tent of Meeting in the middle of the camp stands in for the temple in Jerusalem. In both places, God dwells deep inside where no one can see, and the priests run the show.

The source that refers to an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in this week’s portion and the three stories in later books offers an alternative. Anyone can see God manifest as a pillar of cloud in front of the Tent of Meeting outside the camp. And God speaks from that cloud not only to a priest, Aharon, but also to two prophets, Moshe and Miriam, and to the man who is variously a personal servant, a general, and a chieftain: Yehoshua.

According to Jeon, “The non-Priestly Ohel Moed layer is marked by its focus on a new authority and leadership structure, especially in a struggle with a priestly group. This fits the social and political circumstances of the kingless, postexilic period [after 538 B.C.E.], in which various social and religious groups struggled with each other over different ideas of the community’s restoration, in particular about its leadership.”¹⁵

Regardless of any political agendas after the 6^th century B.C.E., the two different Tents of Meeting in the portion Ki Tisa present a contrast between formal public worship conducted by specialists at a central location, and the option of personal meetings with God outside.

Personally, I wish I could join public worship more often. Singing with a whole congregation lifts my soul, and repeating ancient prayers and rituals puts me in a meditative space. For me, a personal meeting with God—in other words, a numinous experience—is unforgettable, but rare. I am not a Miriam, Aharon, or Yehoshua. But the more ordinary sense of awe I feel when I walk through a forest also reminds me of God.

So I am glad that the Torah hints at a two-tent solution.

See my post Ki Tisa: Stiff-Necked People.
19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 783.
The verb yikach (יִקַּח) is in the imperfect, so it would normally be translated as “he will take”, but that makes no sense in this context.
Rabbi Moshe David Cassuto (1883-1951), translation in www.sefaria.org.
21^st-century rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, electronic edition in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12, 4:21, 6:4, 8:17, 9:11, 16:27; Numbers 19:3.
Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 12:14.
Leviticus 14:40-45.
Leviticus 24:14, 24:23; Numbers 15:35-36. The bodies of Nadav and Avihu, whom God killed after a sacrilege, must be dragged outside the camp in Leviticus 10:4.
Cassuto, ibid.
The text refers to Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) as na-ar (נַעַר) = boy, young man, unmarried man, manservant. Many commentators have counted the years backward from when Yehoshua dies at age 110 to show that he is in his mid-50’s at Mount Sinai, hardly a young man. 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher explained that Yehoshua is Moshe’s “personal valet”.
16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Hirsch, p. 787.
Exodus 33:12-17.
Jaeyoung Jeon, “The Non-Priestly Ohel Moed”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-non-priestly-ohel-moed.

Tetzaveh: Meeting Place

Moshe (“Moses” in English) spends his first 40-day stint on top of Mount Sinai listening to God’s instructions for reforming the Israelite system of worship by means of a portable sanctuary and priests only from the tribe of Levi. In last week’s Torah portion, Terumah, God says:

“Then let them make for me a mikdash, and I will dwell among them. Like all that I myself show you, the pattern of the mishkan and the pattern of all its furnishings, thus you should make it.” (Exodus 25:8-9)

mikdash (מִקְדָּשׁ) = holy place, sanctuary. (From the same root as kadosh, קָדוֹשׁ = holy.)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling place, home. (From the root verb shakhan, שָׁכַן = dwell, settle, stay, inhabit. The mishkan of God is often called a “tabernacle” in English.)

The Tabernacle in the Camp, Collectie Nederland

Then God describes the mishkan and most of the holy items associated with it.¹ In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (Exodus/Shemot 27:20-30:10), God describes the vestments for the new priests and the ritual for ordaining them.²

This Torah portion also contains the first reference to the ohel mo-eid, the “Tent of Meeting” or “Tent of Appointment”:

“And you shall command the Israelites, and they will fetch you clear, beaten olive oil for the illumination, to bring up the lamp regularly in the ohel mo-eid, outside the dividing curtain that is in front of the testimony; Aharon and his sons shall arrange it from evening until morning in front of God …” (Exodus 27:20-21)

ohel (אֹהֶל) = tent, home that nomads can dismantle and reconstruct.

mo-eid (מוֹעֵד) = meeting, meeting place, appointed time, appointment. (From the root verb ya-ad, יָעַד = appointed, designated, met by appointment.)

This lamp is the seven-branched menorah (lampstand) in the front chamber of the mishkan.³ Moshe’s brother Aharon (“Aaron” in English) and Aharon’s four sons will be ordained as the revised religion’s first priests. Before this week’s portion, Tetzaveh, the word mo-eid is used only for appointment times, not places.⁴ But the ohel mo-eid is a place, a structure with a tent roof; a place which God appoints for some of the daily duties of the priests, and a place for God’s own “meeting” with the whole congregation.

An appointed place

After the brief reference to olive oil for the menorah, God describes the new priests’ vestments, from turbans to underpants.

“And you will make for them linen underpants to cover naked flesh; they will be from the hips to the thighs. And they must be upon Aharon and upon his sons whenever they come into the ohel mo-eid, or whenever they approach the altar to minister to the holy; then they will not bear iniquity and die …” (Exodus 28:43)

The ohel mo-eid is the mishkan, and the altar will stand in the courtyard in front of the mishkan. It is not clear whether the priests must wear all their vestments in these two holy spaces, or if they must merely wear their linen underpants under whatever robes or tunics they choose.

One of the first laws that God gave Moshe after the Ten Commandments was:

“And you must not climb up to my altar by ascending stairs, so that your nakedness will not be revealed upon it.” (Exodus 20:23)

Avoiding an altar with stairs is one way to avoid exposing one’s genitals when engaged in an act of worship. Wearing a long robe is not sufficient, since even if the people below cannot see a man’s private parts, it is forbidden to expose that part of their anatomy to even the floor or stairs of a holy place. The portion Terumah provides another way to avoid exposure: underpants.

On the other hand, the majority opinion in the Talmud is that a priest must be wearing all of his vestments, not the just underpants, when he is in the ohel mo-eid or its front courtyard. The reason, according to the Talmud, is that a man only counts as a priest when he is wearing the sacred vestments, and any non-priest officiating at the temple must be executed.⁵

Next God tells Moshe the ritual for ordaining the priests. First Moshe must bring a bull and two rams, three kinds of bread, and the new vestments to the altar.

“Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the ohel mo-eid and you shall wash them in water.” (Exodus 29:4)

Both the basin for the priests’ ritual washing and the altar for burnt offerings are located outside the Tent of Meeting, in front of its entrance.

Then Moshe will dress Aharon in all his vestments, including the additional sacred items of the high priest: a long blue robe with bells around the hem, a tabard with a breast-piece containing twelve gems for the twelve tribes and a pocket containing two divining devices, and a medallion to wear on his forehead over his turban.⁶ After that Moshe will dress Aharon’s four sons in the vestments that all priests wear: turbans, long tunics, and sashes. (The Torah does not say whether they put on their own underpants.)

“Then you shall bring the bull to the front of the ohel mo-eid, and Aharon and his sons shall lean their hands on the head of the bull. And you shall slaughter the bull in front of God, at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid.” (Exodus 29:10-11)

After calling for the ritual slaughtering of the bull and anointing of the altar and the new priests with its blood, God utters an aside about the high priest’s vestments.

And the holy garments that are Aharon’s will become his sons’ after him … For seven days the priest replacing him among his sons will wear them—the one who comes into the ohel mo-eid to minister at the holy place. (Exodus 29:30)

Now the high priest is defined not only by his special vestments, but also as the one who serves inside the ohel mo-eid. (Although other priests are allowed inside the front room of the ohel mo-eid, only the high priest may light the lamps and the incense altar there.)

Returning to the ordination ceremony, God says that Aharon and his sons must spend seven days eating bread and the meat of the ordination ram—

“—at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid.” (Exodus 29:32) They will not be allowed inside until the eighth day, after they have spent seven days at the threshold.

A meeting place

Then God tells Moshe what offerings should be made on the new altar on ordinary days (not on Shabbat or other holy days, which require more slaughtered animals). On ordinary days, God wants one yearling lamb every morning and one every evening, each lamb accompanied by flour with oil stirred into it, and a libation of wine. This will be:

“… a perpetual completely-burned offering throughout your generations, at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid in front of God. There iva-eid with you [plural], to speak to you [singular] there.” (Exodus 29:42)

iva-eid (אִוָּעֵד) = I will meet by appointment, I meet by appointment. (An imperfect form of the verb ya-ad, which is also the root of mo-eid.)

The Hebrew Bible sometimes switches randomly between the second-person singular and the second-person plural. But the next verse confirms that God will meet more than one person in front of the ohel mo-eid.

“Veno-adeti there with the Israelites, and it will be made holy by my glory. And I will make holy the ohel mo-eid and the altar; and Aharon and his sons I will make holy, to be my priests.” (Exodus 29:43-44)

veno-adeti (וְנֺעַדְתִּי) = and I will meet by appointment. (A vav consecutive perfect form of the verb ya-ad.)

In other words, God will “meet” the Israelites at designated times in the courtyard in front of the ohel mo-eid—the Tent of Meeting or Tent of Appointment. The Israelites will bring offerings, the priests will place them on the altar fire, and God will be there to appreciate them. Additionally, God will continue to speak to Moshe in front of that tent, among other places.

The altar is made holy by God’s glory (kavod, כָּבוֹד) only once, when the ritual prescribed in the Exodus portion Terumah is performed in the Leviticus portion Shemini. In Leviticus 9:23-24, God sends fire out from inside the mishkan to land on the new altar and finish consecrating it.

The rest of the time God’s glory is either located inside the mishkan, or appears as a cloud or fire—the same one that is shrouding Moshe at the top of Mount Sinai.⁷ In the future God’s glory, manifest as a cloud by day and fire by night, will hang above the mishkan or ohel mo-eid when the Israelites are camped, and lead the way to the next campsite when they are on the road.⁸

The expression ohel mo-eid appears 137 times in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy, and usually—but not always—refers to God’s mishkan. The next Torah portion in Exodus, Ki Tisa, includes a strange passage in which there is an ohel mo-eid before anyone has started to build the mishkan—and Moshe, at least, meets God there.

Of course, the Tent of Meeting in the book of Exodus is a good precursor for the temple in Jerusalem; anyone reading or hearing Exodus during temple times would probably feel reassured that God had requested a similar place of worship long ago.

Although some people, in the Hebrew Bible and today, encounter manifestations of God at odd moments in random places, meeting God is more likely in a place of worship. I have found that coming to a synagogue and singing prayers with other Jews makes it more likely that I will feel the touch of holiness—that I will come closer to meeting God.

See my posts Terumah: Contributing, Terumah: Wood Inside, Terumah: Tree of Light, Terumah: Under Cover, Terumah: Bread of Faces, Terumah: Heavy Metals, and Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day.
See my posts Tetzaveh: Clothed in Three Reminders and a Warning, Tetzaveh: Flower on the Forehead, and Tetzaveh: The Clothes Make the Man.
For more on the menorah, see my post Terumah: Tree of Light.
Genesis 1:14, 17:21, 18:14, 21:2; and Exodus 9:5, 13:10, and 23:15.
Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 83b.
See my post Tetzaveh: Clothed in Three Reminders and a Warning.
Exodus 24:15-18.
Exodus 40:34-38.

Terumah: Contributing

Before giving Moshe (“Moses” in English) the first pair of stone tablets at the summit of Mount Sinai, God gives him instructions for founding a new religion, featuring priests and a portable tent-sanctuary. The instructions begin with this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (Exodus/Shemot 25:1-2:19), which opens:

And God spoke to Moshe, saying: “Speak to the Israelites, and they must take for me a terumah; from every man whose heart urges him on, you will take my terumah.” (Exodus 25:1-2)

terumah (תְּרוּמָה) = voluntary contribution lifted up and offered to God. (From the root verb rum, רוּם = to be high, to be exalted.)

In other words, God is inviting people to make gifts because they want to. A list of materials to contribute follows, but no contributions are mandated. Furthermore, according to Chayim ibn Attar: “… a person should not make a contribution until he was in the proper frame of mind. … The Torah also may wish to teach that the term ‘my gift,’ cannot be used except when the donor has donated it willingly, generously, with all his heart.”¹

Proposed gifts

All the materials that God requests (or proposes) will be used to fashion a portable sanctuary and its implements, and to make vestments for the priests of the new religion. Gold, silver, and four kinds of yarn (blue, red-violet, and scarlet wool, and bleached linen) are needed for both the sanctuary and the vestments. Acacia wood is needed for the framework of the sanctuary and its courtyard, and for the walls of the sanctuary (which will be covered with fabric inside and out). Goat’s hair yarn and two kinds of leather are needed for the three roof coverings to be draped over a wood framework. Copper (or brass or bronze) is needed for the altar and the wash-basin outside the sanctuary, and for clasps and sockets in the areas that do not require silver. Precious stones will be sewn onto the high priest’s vestments, incense spices are needed for one of the high priest’s duties, and olive oil is needed for inaugurating priests.

Why do the Israelites have all these materials? Harold Kushner pointed out: “The gold, silver, and jewels that the Israelites would give were taken from the Egyptians when they left Egypt. They were not to be used for personal benefit but for something holy and transcendant.”²

The Israelites also “borrowed” clothing from their Egyptian neighbors, which might have contained the woolen yarn colored with expensive dyes, and the linen threads. The Israelite women already had copper mirrors, and presumably copper pans, spices, and olive oil that they packed them for the journey.

Yet no matter where the materials came from, they are all made from things that God (as the creator of nature) originally provided. Considering this, many Israelites might feel moved to give something back to God. And the act of giving is in itself beneficial. Jonathan Sacks wrote: “To be in a situation where you can only receive, not give, is to lack human dignity.”³

A small space

After listing the materials to be donated, God tells Moshe:

“Then let them make me a holy-place, and veshakhanti among them. Like all that I myself show you, the pattern of the mishkan and the pattern of all its furnishings, thus you should make it.” (Exodus 25:8-9)

veshakhanti (וְשָׁכַנְתִּי) = and I will dwell, and I will settle. (From the verb shakhan, שָׁכַן = dwell, settle, stay, inhabit.)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling place, home. (From the root verb shakhan. Out of 137 occurrences of the word mishkan in the Hebrew Bible, only 12 refer to human rather than divine dwelling places.⁴ The mishkan of God is often called a “tabernacle” in English.)

If they build it, God will come. But how could God live in a structure that will be, according to God’s subsequent instructions, only 10 x 20 cubits (about 15 x 30 feet or 4½ x 9 meters)?

Many classic commentators pointed out that God is too vast to fit inside. They cited biblical passages such as: “Behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You” (I Kings 8:27); “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24); and “The heavens are My throne, and the earth is My footstool” (Isaiah 66:1).

In the 14^th century Bachya ben Asher explained that only God’s kavod (כָּבוֹד = glory, magnificence, impressiveness) would dwell inside the mishkan. God’s kavod previously appeared as a pillar of cloud and fire, then as the cloud and fire on Mount Sinai. Now it would manifest above the ark in the back chamber of the sanctuary, called the Holy of Holies.

Other commentators have noted that God says: “make me a holy-place, and I will dwell among them”—not “inside it”.

For example, in the 19^th century Malbim wrote: “He commanded that each individual should build him a sanctuary in the recesses of his heart, that he should prepare himself to be a dwelling place for the Lord … as well as an altar on which to offer up every portion of his soul to the Lord …”⁵

This has become a popular interpretation in modern times. But it begs the question of why God asks the Israelites to build a structure made out of wood, metal, fabric, and leather.

Insecurity

When God dictated a long list of laws to Moshe right after the revelation to all the Israelites at Mount Sinai, one of the first things God said was:

An altar of earth you may make for me, and you should slaughter upon it your complete-burned offerings and your wholeness offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and I will bless you. (Exodus 20:21)

Since God is everywhere, and can come to people anywhere, why do the Israelites now need to build an elaborate temporary structure for God to dwell in?

One proposed reason why God calls for a mishkan is that it will help to convince the Israelites that God is with them. Just before Moshe comes back down the mountain with the instructions for making the mishkan, the Israelites in the camp are ordering Aharon (“Aaron” in English) to make them “a god that will go before us” (Exodus 32:1). As I wrote in my post Beha-alotkha & Ki Tisa: Calf Replacement, once the people believe they will never see Moshe again, they cannot bear to go on without at least an idol. So Aharon makes the golden calf.

Does God know ahead of time that the Israelites will want a concrete symbol of the divine? Or, as much classic commentary claims, are the passages in the book of Exodus out of order regarding the timing of events? Either way, the people are insecure, prone to feeling abandoned, and God orders the building of the mishkan.

Cassuto wrote: “… the children of Israel, after they had been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany. … it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God’s presence among them.”⁶

We learn in the book of Numbers that when the Israelites do finally march north from Mount Sinai, God’s manifestation as cloud by day and fire by night returns to guide them and signal when they should break camp.⁷ But the people do not know ahead of time that this will happen. And they need something concrete to reassure them right away.

Making something

Commentators through the centuries have proposed additional reasons why God wants the Israelites to build a mishkan. One of my favorites appears in Bamidbar Rabbah:

“You find that all the days that they were engaged in the labor of the Tabernacle, they were not complaining. When they completed the labor of the Tabernacle, the Holy One blessed be He was shouting: Woe, let them not return to complaining like they used to complain.”⁸

Personally, I find that there is nothing like doing creative, self-directed work to take my mind off my worries. And the Israelites get something close to that.

In the Torah portion Ki Tisa, before God gives Moshe the first pair of stone tablets, God appoints a master craftsman and his assistant (Betzaleil and Ohaliav) from among the Israelites, and hints that other skilled people will work under their supervision.⁹ When Moshe passes on God’s instructions to the people in the portion Vayakheil, he says outright:

And everyone wise of mind among you should come and make everything that God has commanded. (Exodus 35:10)

Then both men and women donate materials, and both men and women use their skills to make the pieces of the mishkan and the priests’ vestments. And during that whole year, nobody rebels, grumbles, or complains.

Changing

Could the experience of working together to create all these things for God permanently change the Israelites’ attitude? Jonathan Sacks thought so when he wrote: “The Tabernacle did not last forever, but the lesson it taught did. It is not what God does for us that transforms us, but what we do for God. … It is what we do, not what is done to us, that makes us free. That is a lesson as true today as it was then.”¹⁰

Sacks explained: “When a central power—even when this is God Himself—does everything on behalf of the people, they remain in a state of arrested development. They complain instead of acting. They give way easily to despair. When the leader, in this case Moses, is missing, they do foolish things, none more so than making a Golden Calf. There is only one solution: to make the people co-architects of their own destiny, to get them to build something together, to shape them into a team and show them that they are not helpless, that they are responsible and capable of collaborative action.”¹¹

Yet making the mishkan and the priests’ vestments does not lead to a permanent change in the Israelites’ self-confidence or attitude toward God. Perhaps the problem is that they do all the craftsmanship in their camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they have water, daily manna, grazing for their livestock, and no enemies. Once the Israelites leave Mount Sinai, the complaints and rebellions start up again—mostly because the men (former slaves who have fought in only one clash)¹² have no confidence in their ability to conquer Canaan by force of arms. Nobody is training them for war, and they cannot believe that God will provide enough magical help to make them win. Only after the Israelites have spent 40 years in the wilderness does the next generation march in and begin the conquest.

What if you had never had a chance to take initiative, to make decisions about your life, or to use your own talents—and then suddenly, like the Israelites, you were invited to contribute to a major creative project?

I lived under my mother’s thumb until I was 17 and I escaped to college. Like the Israelites eating manna and camping below Mount Sinai, I was not completely independent; my parents still paid for my expenses. But I lived in a dorm, I chose my own friends and my own classes, I did my own work, and I earned appreciation and respect. When my mother tried to take over my life again, I rebelled. I made mistakes, but I managed to become an adult.

The Israelites in the book of Exodus have one glorious year as volunteers making the mishkan. But once they finish, they have to go back to being dependent and following orders. No more contributions of their own are accepted. And they do not view God or Moshe as benign parents in the book of Numbers, because they are marching toward what they assume is pointless death at the hands of the Canaanites. Naturally they lapse back into complaining. Yet somehow, they raise their own children to be more confident in God and more confident in themselves. That is the way they achieve a permanent change.

Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18^th century, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, editor of d’rash commentary, Etz Hayim, The Rabbinical Assembly of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001, p. 486. See Exodus 3:21-22, 11:2-3, and 12:35-36.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Essays on Ethics, A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: “The Labor of Gratitude: Terumah”, reprinted in www.sefaria.org.
Numbers 24:5; Isaiah 22:16, 54:2; Jeremiah 19:18; Ezekiel 25:4; Habakuk 1:6; Psalms 49:12, 87:2; Job 18:21, 21:28, and 39:6; and Songs 1:8.
Malbim (acronym of 19^th-century rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser), quoted by Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, translated by Aryeh Newman, The Joint Authority for Jewish and Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 483.
20^th century rabbi Umberto Cassuto (a.k.a. Moshe David Cassuto) quoted by Leibowitz, ibid., p. 484.
Numbers 9:15-23.
Bamidbar Rabbah, 11^th or 12^th century, translation in Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 31:1-13.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, 21^st century, Covenant & Conversation, “Building Builders: Terumah”.
Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, “The Home We Build Together: Terumah 5781” (2021).
With the men of Amaleik in Exodus 17:8-13.

Mishpatim: Choreography and Responsibility

After all the Israelites experience the revelation at Mount Sinai,¹ God dictates about 50 specific laws to Moshe (“Moses” in English) in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (Exodus/Shemot 21:1-24:18).

Then [God] said to Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar. Then Moshe alone will draw near to God. But they must not draw near. And the people must not go up with him.” (Exodus 24:1-2)

Before Moshe carries out this instruction, he shares all the laws from God with the Israelites.

Then Moshe came and recounted to the people all of the words of God and all the laws. And all the people answered with one voice, and they said: “All the words that God has spoken, we will do.” (Exodus 24:3)

Next Moshe writes it all down. In the morning he leads an elaborate covenantal ceremony (without being told to), He builds an altar, sets up twelve standing stones, and orders young men to sacrifice bulls to God. Moshe splashes half of the bulls’ blood on the altar, then reads God’s laws out loud. This time the Israelites shout:

“All that God has spoken, we will do and we will heed!” And Moshe took the blood and splashed it on the people. And he said: “Here is the blood of the covenant that God has cut with you by means of all these words!” (Exodus 24:7-8)

Only after he has done all he can to secure the commitment of the Israelite people does Moshe lead the elders partway up the mountain.

And they went up, Moshe and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and under [God’s] feet something like a brick pavement of sapphire, and like the substance of the heavens for purity. And God did not send out [God’s] hand against the eminent Israelites. And they beheld God, and they ate and they drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Where does Moshe go next?

Then God said to Moshe: “Come up to me on the mountain. And you will be there, and I will give you the stone tablets, and the teaching, and the commands that I have inscribed to teach them.” And Moshe and his attendant, Yehoshua, stood up, and Moshe went up the mountain of God. (Exodus 24:12-13)

If the party of 74 men is still sitting partway up Mount Sinai when God speaks to Moshe again, where did Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) come from?

Bachya ben Asher wrote: “Joshua was one of the seventy elders mentioned previously as having had a vision of God. In fact, Joshua was the most senior of these seventy elders.”²

From the book of Judges on, elders are older men who sit in the gate of their town or village and judge disputes and legal issues the residents bring to them. In the previous Torah portion in Exodus, Moshe appointed elders as lower court judges who would refer the difficult cases to him.³

Yehoshua (Joshua) is a young man (see Exodus 33:11 below), and he has a different role. He waits on Moshe, and he also served as the commander when the Israelite men fought off the Amalekites on the way to Mount Sinai.⁴ So although Yehoshua has as much status as an elder, I do not believe he is one.

The next verse implies that not even the elders are still partway up the mountain when God speaks to Moshe again.

And [Moshe] said to the elders: “Wait bazeh for us until we return to you! And hey, Aharon and Chur are with you. Whoever has a lawsuit can approach them.” (Exodus 24:14)

bazeh (בָּזֶה) = here, at this place.

Moshe tells the elders to “wait here” until he and Yehoshua (Joshua) return. Where is “here”?

The rest of the Israelites, including any plaintiffs or witnesses, are forbidden to go even halfway up the mountain. So the elders cannot judge their cases from that spot. Moshe must be instructing them, along with Aharon and Chur, to wait at the foot of the mountain. (It is reasonable to assume that Chur is one of the 70 elders, since he and Aharon supported Moshe’s staff during the battle with the Amalekites.)

Therefore bazeh, “at this place”, means the camp at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moshe must have led everyone back down to camp before he gave the elders their orders.

Moshe’s instructions also reveal that he expects to be at the top of the mountain for some time. If he thought that receiving “the stone tablets, and the teaching” from God would take only a day or two, he would probably say that anyone with a dispute too difficult for the seventy elders could postpone the case until he gets back. Instead, he appoints Aharon and Chur as a high court while he is gone.

Where does Yehoshua go?

Moshe and Yehoshua (Joshua) stand up. Moshe tells the elders to wait “for us until we return to you”.

Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. (Exodus 24:15)

If Moshe goes up the mountain alone, where does Yehoshua go?

In the 11^th century C.E., Rashi wrote: “As a disciple he was accompanying the teacher as far as the place where the bounds of the mountain were marked out, whence onward he was not permitted to proceed. … Joshua pitched his tent there and stayed there during the whole forty days which Moses spent on the mountain. For thus we find that when Moses came down from the mountain it states, ‘and Joshua heard the voice of the people that they shouted’— from which we may infer that he was not with them in the camp.”⁵

View at the top

The text says that Moshe went into the cloud (he-anan, הֶעָנָן),not a cloud (which would be just anan). So this must be the manifestation of God that led the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai in the shape of a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. In the next verse, the cloud is explicitly identified with God.

And the kavod of God settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. And [God] called to Moses on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud. (Exodus 24:16)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = impressive appearance, glory, splendor, weight.

Apparently Moshe climbs up as far as God’s cloud of glory, then waits in front of the blank white fog until God calls him inside.

According to Sefer Olam Rabbah, “This was in order for Moses to purify himself.”⁶

According to Avot de Rabbi Natan, the six-day wait was “So that he could be emptied of all the food and drink that was in his stomach, so that when he was sanctified, he would be like the angels who serve God.”⁷

Bachya ben Asher wrote that during those six days, “Moses prepared himself mentally for meeting Hashem [God] …”⁸

View from the bottom

While Moshe is staring at the divine cloud, the Israelites below are seeing something different.

But the appearance of the kavod of God was like a consuming fire at the top of the mountain in the eyes of the Israelites. (Exodus 24:17)

Moses sees God’s kavod as a cloud, or a wall of fog; it obscures his vision but is not deadly. The Israelites below see God’s kavod as a “consuming” fire.

When I taught a class on this part of the Torah portion in 2024, my adult students came up with a good metaphorical explanation: The first time Moshe climbs Mount Sinai, he sees God as fire in the bush that burned but was not consumed. By the time he returns to Mount Sinai, he has developed a relationship with God, so God appears to him as mysterious, like a cloud, but not threatening. The Israelites below, however, have not been conversing with God, so God appears as a dangerous consuming fire to them.

They see their leader, Moshe, walk into the fire, and they doubt that he will ever come back. (See my post Mishpatim: Seeing the Cloud.) It amazes me that nevertheless the Israelites wait for forty days before going to Aharon and demanding an idol to lead them the rest of the way to Canaan.

Into the cloud

Then Moses entered the midst of the cloud, and he went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

Jewish midrash noted that later in Exodus, Moses is unable to enter the newly-constructed Tent of Meeting “because the cloud had settled on it and the kavod of God filled the dwelling-place” (Exodus 40:35). So how does Moses manage to get into the cloud of God’s kavod on Mount Sinai?

According to the Talmud, “This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, grabbed Moses and brought him into the cloud, since he could not enter on his own.”⁹

Asher Tzvi of Ostrow wrote: “When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the cloud opened its mouth and Moses entered it, and he walked into the firmament like a man walking on land.”¹⁰ This midrash continues with Moshe encountering angels in the heavens before he finally reaches God.

When I researched this blog post, I wondered if the apparent inconsistencies in the locations of Moshe (Moses), Yehoshua (Joshua), Aharon (Aaron), and the elders were due to a redactor patching together several traditional stories about the same event. But I have not found any support for this hypothesis in modern source scholarship. Friedman views the story as coming from a single source from Exodus 24:1 through “And Moses went up the mountain” (Exodus 24:15); the author does not change until the second half of Exodus 24:15, “and the cloud covered the mountain”.¹¹

When I did a close reading of the text, I discovered that the choreography actually does work if Moshe leads Aharon and the elders back down to the Israelite camp after their vision of God’s feet, and that is where God speaks to Moshe again, and Yehoshua (Joshua) jumps up and accompanies him as far as the foot of the route back up Mount Sinai.

The story would be tidier if after Moshe’s party beheld God’s feet and ate and drank, Moshe continued up the mountainside alone. I can imagine Aharon leading his sons and the seventy elders back down to the Israelite camp, while Yehoshua waits there for forty days.

But I think that Moshe does not want to leave a large group of dazed and excited men, who have been drinking as well as eating, alone on the mountainside. What if they doze off and wake up disoriented? What if they cannot find their way down? What if it gets dark and they stumble?

After God tells Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar” (Exodus 24:1), Moshe postpones leaving until he has conducted an impressive covenant ceremony with all the Israelites. As their leader, he is responsible for them, and he decides that he should secure the loyalty of all of the people before doing any special ritual with the elders.

When the ritual with the elders is complete,¹² Moshe once again puts his responsibility as a leader first. He makes sure everyone gets home safely before he climbs Mount Sinai again, even though retracing his steps means a lot more physical labor.

Some prophets might be tempted to rush toward God, eager for a personal revelation. But Moshe takes care of his people first.

If only all our leaders were as responsible as Moshe, our lives would be blessed.

“The revelation at Mount Sinai” commonly refers to Exodus 19:13-20:17 in the Torah portion Yitro, which includes spectacular volcanic effects including synesthesia (see my post Yitro & Bereishit: Don’t Even Touch It) and the pronouncement of the “Ten Commandments”.
14^th-century Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 18:24-25.
Exodus 17:8-13.
Rashi, acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomon Yitzchaki, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Sefer Olam Rabbah, 2^nd century C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Avot de Rabbi Natan, 650-950 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Bachya ben Asher, ibid.
Talmud Bavli, Yoma 4b, translation by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, William Davidson Talmud in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Asher Tzvi of Ostrow, Ma’ayan HaChochmah, 1816.
Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, pp. 160-161.
See my post Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant.